How about we discuss some realistic options for getting the sport on track rather than just gawking at the train wreck?

NCAA President Mark Emmert should be open to anything after releasing a statement, reading “the allegations, if true, point to a systemic failure that must be fixed and fixed now.” He further said he and the NCAA’s Board of Governors “are completely committed to making transformation changes.”

Suggestions are pouring in.

Former Wildcat and current Golden State coach Steve Kerr said athletes should be allowed to make sponsorship money.

LeBron James suggested expanding the NBA’s G-League to become the measure of minor-league baseball or for the adoption of a club system, similar to European soccer.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, meanwhile, said in a phone interview Wednesday that he wants to see an end to the one-and-done system. College basketball, he said, is “not meant to be a way station to the pros.”

Pac-12 task force

Scott in November convened a Pac-12 task force to address the issues threatening college sports. He said the group – which includes Golden State Warriors General Manager Bob Myers, former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, Olympic gold medalist and national champion Jennifer Azzi and former Stanford coach Mike Montgomery – should be finalizing its work in the next 30 days and will take a set of recommendations to Condoleezza Rice’s NCAA Commission on College Basketball.

Scott, who isn’t aware of another conference-level commission, said he met with Rice’s group this week and that he thinks changes will come in time for next year’s basketball season.

In previewing the Pac-12 task force findings, Scott said he wanted to push “bold proposals” that reduce the role of recruiting middle men and change the NCAA rulebook to get rid of what he called “ticky-tack stuff,” such as “expenses for a meal or something like that.”

He also said he was encouraged to hear influential NBA players such as James discussing an expansion of basketball’s minor-league system.

“Leaders in college sports,” Scott said, “want young people to have a choice.”

He said the NBA should look to other leagues as a model.

“Major League Baseball gets it right,” he said. “They create a fork in the road. You can go to the draft out of high school. But if you go to college, (then the pros) can re-evaluate you again in three years.”

Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller is seen at Pac-12 media days last October.(Photo: Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports)

Pay the players

Scott stopped short of calling for players to get paid.

“College sports ought to be for students, and they should not be paid as employees,” he said. “They should be incredibly well supported, not just through scholarship money but through covering miscellaneous expenses … medical, food, you name it. But there is a line that should not be crossed, which is paying them a salary or fees to participate in athletics.”

Consider this a respectful, yet forceful disagreement. There’s too much money around to support the antiquated notion of amateurism in men's college basketball.

If not outright cash, players should receive deferred compensation through annuities, family educational trusts or even a 401(K)-style investment plan that they can access upon graduation.

That money, however, shouldn’t come from taxpayers. It should come from TV networks, private businesses or individual donors.

Still, that’s an aside. It doesn’t solve the current problem.

Stop cheating

“There’s so much of an emphasis on winning,” NCAA champion coach Nolan Richardson said by phone, “that people go out and cheat to win. How do you stop that?”

That’s the problem.

If you start paying players, “the bidders, as I call them, ‘the flesh peddlers,’ they’ll just go up on their price,” said Richardson, whose Arkansas Razorbacks won the NCAA title in 1994.

“There have got to be some penalties that are pretty harsh,” Richardson said, “particularly if they find out it’s one of the coaches.”

The root

Former Temple coach John Chaney agrees about harsh penalties.

Part of what federal prosecutors will have to prove in court is that accused coaches such as former Arizona assistant Book Richardson, who has denied wrongdoing, committed crimes, not just NCAA violations.

“You’ve got to legislate and offer some jail time,” Chaney said.

“Proselytizing athletes with not only money, but letting them know they’re going to become famous, and they’re going to be on television, and they’re going to be in the NBA ... it's going to be hard to break unless you create a law that punishes anybody who offers a youngster money.”

That’s a strong idea. Remove the ambiguity around what’s right or wrong by making predatory recruiting practices illegal under federal law.